Hanover-Misburg subcamp

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Eugène Dodeigne memorial on the former camp site

The Hanover-Misburg satellite camp was a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Misburg , today a district of Hanover . The first prisoners arrived on June 26, 1944 and had to set up camp on the site of the Deurag-Nerag oil refinery on the Mittelland Canal . They then carried out clean-up work in the Deurag-Nerag factories after bombing by the Allied air forces.

camp

Deurag-Nerag in Misburg was one of the most important suppliers of aircraft engine oils during the Second World War and, in addition to the oil refinery, plants for synthetic gasoline production were also set up. This made the Deurag-Nerag an important military target for the Allies and on June 18 and 20, 1944, these facilities were badly damaged in air raids on Hanover . As early as June 23, 1943, Edmund Geilenberg , who was personally appointed by Adolf Hitler to be responsible for the mineral oil security plan with considerable powers, came to Misburg. In a meeting with the directors of Deurag-Nerag, the responsible armaments inspection and the Gauleiter , he assured the availability of concentration camp prisoners .

The prisoners, who arrived in Misburg on June 26, 1944, found a fenced-in camp with four Wehrmacht tents and a kitchen tent, a toilet block with six latrines and two open-air washing facilities, along with a bunker that belonged to a flak position . The construction of wooden barracks did not begin until the end of September and it took until December 1944 when the third and fourth barracks were finished, so many prisoners had to continue to live and spend the night in the open, unprotected from the weather. Misburg was bombed around 45 times as an important war target and the pressure waves endangered the prisoners and sometimes even tore the tent roofs.

Camp inmates

In addition to the poor living conditions, the prisoners' working conditions were catastrophic. The risk of injury was great because they were exposed to the risk of cuts and injuries when clearing up sharp-edged steel and iron pipes without tools, they also had to clean up areas polluted by oil sludge and potassium hydroxide and look for bombs in small, eleven-man commandos led by a kapo .
The prisoners only had to do evacuation work and were not used in the factories themselves. The weekly working time was 67 hours, every third Sunday was free. The diet was inadequate, although those employed in the Geilenberg program were supposed to receive a hard labor allowance.

The majority of the 1,000 to 1,200 prisoners who were always present in the camp came from the Soviet Union , Poland and France . There were also smaller national groups from the Netherlands , Belgium and France. About 30, mostly criminal, German inmates were employed in the camp as prison functionaries .

Between June 1944 and April 1945, 55 dead prisoners were registered, probably a lot more. Because at the beginning of November 1944, due to the poor living and working conditions in Misburg, 600 to 800 concentration camp prisoners who were no longer able to work had to be transported to the Neuengamme main camp.

The camp was cleared from April 6, 1945. The prisoners who were capable of marching had to leave the camp on April 6, 1945 and arrived at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on April 8. The concentration camp prisoners who remained in the camp, unable to march, were brought directly to Bergen-Belsen by truck on April 8th.

Warehouse staff

The camp was guarded by around 70 men from the state rifle battalion. First a police lieutenant and then an infantry captain was a command leader . From July 1944 SS-Sturmführer Karl Wiedemann and then SS-Hauptscharführer Hans Gehre were camp leaders. Richard Winter , who shot a Belgian prisoner, was sentenced to death by a Belgian military tribunal in 1948 . This sentence was converted to 15 years' imprisonment and he was released in late 1954. The German judiciary suspended prosecution.

memorial

In 1979 a bronze plaque was placed on the site of this subcamp . A stone memorial by the artist Eugène Dodeigne has been located on the former camp site since 1989 .

The history of the camp, the fate of those detained and the process of coming to terms with it in the post-war period , especially the prosecution, were comprehensively documented in the mid-1980s.

Memorial plaque on the forest cemetery

Memorial plaque at the Misburg forest cemetery

A memorial plaque in a wall of the nearby Misburg forest cemetery commemorates the forced laborers who worked and suffered in the concentration camp during the National Socialist era .

literature

Web links

Commons : KZ-Außenstelle Misburg (Hanover)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marc Buggeln: Hannover-Misburg. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): Der Ort des Terrors .. Vol. 5. 2007, p. 439.
  2. ↑ See Federal Ministry of Justice : Directory of the concentration camps and their external commandos in accordance with Section 42 (2) BEG No. 572 Hannover-Misburg
  3. ↑ Marc Buggeln: Hannover-Misburg. In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): Der Ort des Terrors .. Vol. 5. 2007, pp. 438 and 440.
  4. ^ Rainer Fröbe, Claus Füllberg-Stolberg, Christoph Gutmann, Rolf Keller, Herbert Obenaus, Hans Hermann Schröder: Concentration camp in Hanover. Concentration camp work and the armaments industry in the late phase of the Second World War (= publications by the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen. Vol. 35 = Sources and studies on the general history of Lower Saxony in modern times. Vol. 8). 2 volumes. Lax, Hildesheim 1985, ISBN 3-7848-2422-6 .
  5. ↑ Ulrike Puvogel : Memorials for the Victims of National Socialism. A documentation (= series of publications. Working aids for political education , vol. 245), ed. from the Federal Agency for Political Education , Bonn: Federal Agency for Political Education, 1987, ISBN 3-923423-67-5 , p. 422; Preview over google books

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 '58.8 "  N , 9 ° 51' 22.8"  E